Pascoite gets bored and reviews anime, vol. 21 · 11:18pm Nov 16th, 2021
Digging into a couple slightly longer things lately, so I don't have to fill in much of things I recently finished. Who knew a random assortment of titles would be short on the letter R? I guess the pirates stole them all. Featured items this week are Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Alternative Architecture and O Maidens in Your Savage Season, after the break.
I'd already decided to cover the Ghost in the Shell stuff piecemeal, as they vary in quality a lot and I don't know how much of it I'll get to. Which is obvious, since it's already been in three of these blogs...
I had Ghost in the Shell: Arise and Ghost in the Shell: Arise – Alternative Architecture both on my watch list, but it turns out this is one of those situations where the former is just a condensed movie version of the latter. So I watched the latter.
Even after seeing it, I'm not sure whether this was a reboot or a prequel. Even if it's meant to be a prequel, I wouldn't know if it was "official," as it's from a different studio and doesn't use the same VAs, like Standalone Complex did. For that matter, I'll lump in Ghost in the Shell: The New Movie, as it's a follow-on to Arise, and that title makes it sound more like a reboot was intended. But it could still fit as a prequel. I dunno.
It starts out with a Kusanagi who's not a member of Section 9, and in fact, Aramaki is the only one who is. IG is a good studio, and the production values were pretty high here. I liked the art, and while Kusanagi does look about the same, she's significantly shorter. The plot isn't going to surprise anyone familiar with the property: a conspiracy involving computer viruses. That's kind of ubiquitous, and so are the lulls in the action. Like all that other material, there are good action sequences interspersed with long, talky, expository scenes, but hey, that's par for the course.
I thought the action was good enough to outweigh the slow spots, and I rather liked this take on Kusanagi's character. I do feel like the ease with which various people could hack whatever was driven by plot convenience. As an origin story for all the members of the team, it was cool to see them all come together, some more willingly than others. And by the end of the movie, it's not clear that they actually are Section 9. They're seemingly still guns for hire.
Great art as I would expect, and the music was... I'll call it strange yet interesting. Sure, there will be people put off by this not being the same as the original continuity, but those people hate fun.
Rating: very good (series), good (movie).
10 episodes + movie, relevant genres: action, mystery, sci-fi.
As Thought Prism pointed out a couple blogs ago, Mari Okada wrote for a number of series I consider standouts, and I already had O Maidens in Your Savage Season on my to-watch list before I even knew who she was. With that piece added, I was looking forward to it even more. As I've alluded to before, the summaries I see of some of these when looking for things to watch can be misleading. The description I saw of this one just said that a group of girls one day discuss what's on their bucket list, and the answer one of them gives changes everyone's lives.
That's not wrong. But it seems somehow more weighty when left vague like that. So... I didn't really like this series that much.
"Well, what's it doing up here in your recommended stuff?" you might say.
Hey, I consider it a tenet of good reviewing that recognition of quality is tantamount. I can admit that there are good things I don't like.
"That's why you panned NGE?"
Now you're just being a turd.
"You're the one who still has the only story on this site* with the word 'terlit' in it."
*suspected but not verified
A badge of honor, thank you very much.
"It's a shame blogposts can't be downvoted."
Don't make me look for that old GTFO meme.
ಠ_ಠ
Anyway. The main characters are a group of five girls who comprise their high school's literature club. I've not read the poem that the series title is a reference to, and on the surface, it would seem to tie in with a literary theme, yet I also had the perception that it dealt with things a little on the raunchy side, and... yeah. This isn't the kind of literature club that reads things on their own then convenes to discuss it. They read it all aloud during their meetings, and it's mostly erotic literature.
I will say that this show is an interesting study in contrasts. Even as they're reading all this blue material, the girls still feel rather distant from it, like it's a purely academic topic. Club president Rika feels like sex is a corrupting influence, main character Kazusa and her best friend Momoko are more oblivious than anything, scary goth poet girl Hongo aspires to be a professional writer and so feels she needs to understand it to write it, and Niina is seen as someone kind of out of place here, because she's really pretty and could easily fit in with the popular crowd, yet she prefers the company of these girls.
A bit of an aside—anime does draw some characters as deliberately ugly at times, but for the most part they range from cute to extremely cute, so we just have to take other characters' word for it when certain ones are supposedly plain or ugly. Kazusa and Momoko are put forth as utterly ordinary, and you just have to keep that in mind, since they're still drawn cute.
That bucket list question does come up, and Niina chimes in that she wants to have sex before she dies. Her answer catches everyone else off guard for different reasons. Rika, because she can't imagine anyone feeling that way, Kazusa and Momoko wouldn't have ever thought of that, and it reinforces Hongo's belief that she has a vast misunderstanding.
Mostly the series follows Kazusa, who increasingly feels like... well, it's complex. And it's realistic. She feels like everyone else but her must be an expert by now, and she starts to take any little behavior she sees from the more popular classmates that they're all sexually active. So she's caught between feeling distraught that she doesn't want sex to take over her life and she must be the dumbest person in the school for not already knowing everything. There's also a boy in her class, Izumi, who's lived next door to her all her life and been a long-time friend to her. The usual anxieties come up about whether they could be more than friends, and whether that would mess anything up, and yes, later on some obvious love triangles do pop up.
What makes things worse is that Izumi's hit a growth spurt and is rather good-looking, so even the popular girls notice him. Kazusa figures he could have any choice of girls he wants, but her estimation of his character is that surely he wouldn't... and she just doesn't know. Then while bringing some leftovers for him while his parents are away, she pokes her head in his room and... I was sure she'd catch him with a girl. But no. She catches him watching a porno. And doing the five-knuckle shuffle. You know, dating Miss Michigan. Running off a batch by hand. Couch hockey for one. Going a couple rounds with ol' Josh. Arm wrestle the one-eyed vessel. Goose the gherkin. Cuddle the kielbasa. Do the pork sword jiggle. Jostlin' the elder.
Strangle the parrot with a backhanded panther grip.
She'd rather forget all this, and really, he'd rather she forget it too, but she takes this as confirmation that he does have sex on his mind. Yet he assures her he wouldn't think that way about her or anyone they know. Yeah, that's not gonna be misunderstood at all.
I don't really like raunchy teen comedies. I just don't find them entertaining. Never cared for movies like American Pie, Porky's, or Fast Times at Ridgemont High. But there's still an earnestness to this I did like. I appreciate Kazusa feeling overwhelmed by her perception that the world just expects her to be governed by sex, and I liked the way the series dealt with the difference between sexual attraction and romantic love. That gets right back to Izumi's statement, and yet another thing I liked is that he never got to the point that he spelled it out explicitly, but everyone still understood. To him, romantic love involves a respect that doesn't immediately jump to sexual attraction.
For her part, Rika is considered severe-looking, yet there's a boy who constantly tells others to leave her be and that she's pretty. She doesn't know what to make of that and may even feel she's not worthy of it.
Where did the series lose me, though? Okay, there are certain relationships that are... tolerated, I guess? Portrayed as somewhat normal? They turn up a lot in anime, and I honestly don't know if that's just An Anime Thing or if these are not considered quite as inappropriate in Japan.
Hongo does write erotic fiction and has had some small success publishing it, but her contact feels like her writing isn't realistic, so she feels like she'd better get some sexual experience ASAP so she can write what she knows. And she throws herself at their homeroom teacher, full-bore. It was disturbing. He puts her off, but her attentions do threaten to gain others' notice, which she uses as fuel to blackmail him into being their faculty advisor. They lack one and are on the brink of being disbanded as a result.
Then there's Niina, who used to be a protegee of a famous acting coach, who's really creepy. He likes little girls, but if he ever actually touched one, she would cease to be a little girl, so he would never do it. And Niina likes to string him along. Those two bits soured me on the series, though I do think Kazusa's story is a heartfelt one, and I still think the general quality of art, music, and story warrant giving this one a high recommendation.
Rating: very good.
12 episodes, relevant genres: romance, comedy, drama, coming of age.
If you're not going to argue with me anymore, I'll go for the also-rans.
Interlude (3 episodes)—this is based on a game/visual novel from over 15 years ago, and the episodes are double length. I don't imagine I'm going to entice anyone to watch it, so I don't mind spoiling things. Main character Naoya goes to school and enjoys time with his friends and girlfriend, but he's plagued by two kinds of dreams. In one, he's in a ruined city and cradling the body of his girlfriend. In the other, he's running through a dark, shadowy city from monsters, and he encounters other people there. Some of those people he encounters in real life, but none of them recognize him or know what he's talking about when he asks them about it. A trio of them are women who work at town hall, and the fan service is strong with them. Eventually, Naoya encounters another woman who runs around this dark city carrying a bow to shoot the monsters. They all assume she's bad as well, but one time she sees him in the real world, and she's astonished. Her family and everyone in her town disappeared one day, and she still goes through the motions of studying at school all day, every day, by herself. Naoya is the first person she's ever seen since then, except in the dream realm. He accompanies her back to her town, but then he gets trapped there as well. When they do encounter everyone in the dream realm again, several characters seem bent on destroying this girl, particularly another girl who controls a fiery dog. It turns out the dream about the destroyed city and the dead girlfriend is a real memory, and after some kind of apocalypse, the few survivors were put into stasis pods so they could live out their lives as if nothing had happened. I don't know what the archer girl's deal was, as she didn't seem to be one of the people in pods. Maybe a memory so intense that the computer system gave her a life of her own? Several of the players are all related and even knew this stuff was going on. The girl with the dog wanted to erase her because she was causing glitches in the system and manifesting that dark city dream world, but Naoya doesn't think it's justified to destroy her. So his solution is to wake back up into the real world, which... doesn't solve anything? He's completely alone now, and I don't know if his absence means archer girl can exist in the simulation now. Not bad for a fantasy/reality ambiguous plot, but it didn't hang together all that well. Maybe the game did it better. Rating: decent, relevant genres: dark, psychological, mystery.
RahXephon (26 episodes + 1 OVA + 1 movie)—I haven't seen the OVA or movie. Now that I'm aware of them, I probably will, but it won't change my review. There's an alien race called Mu who look like humans, though there are ways of telling them apart. Two floating cities of the aliens appear, and the humans end up in a nuclear conflict with them, which resulted in the Mu encasing Tokyo in a barrier that looks kind of like Jupiter, hence it being referred to as Tokyo Jupiter. They've also made it so that time is drastically slowed inside the barrier, which... wouldn't that give humans the advantage? We'd be able to develop technology faster outside the barrier than they can inside. That's all back story, though. The series focuses more on the day-to-day events surrounding certain aliens and humans who can control mech-like entities. There's a musical theme to all of it: the mechs appear to be singing when they attack, and so do the people controlling them. The attack effects are related to music, sometimes even the music itself. The two main characters are childhood friends, a boy named Ayato and a girl named Haruka, who had been on different sides of the Jupiter barrier when it was created, so they existed in different timelines for a while, and Ayato was made to forget about her. The ones inside the barrier only see the destruction there and assume the rest of the world is the same. There are still conflicts going on with the aliens, but the show kind of plays it that the aliens aren't totally malevolent. They're trying to accomplish something they call "tuning the world," and eventually Ayato kind of understands what they're up to and tries to implement his own version of it. It's kind of related to changing the past and kind of not. Like the obvious one is "make it so the aliens lost" or maybe that they never showed up in the first place. He's grabbing for lower-hanging fruit. It didn't leave the series with a strong conclusion, and the OVA won't wrap things up, as it's only 15 minutes long. I'll likely see the movie to find out if it does cap the series off, but unless it really wows me, it won't change my opinion of the show much. Plus the summary of it makes it looks like it's a rehash of the series plot instead of a continuation of it. I thought the art was good, and a series so thematic with music should, and does, present that well. I always liked its tagline: the world, suffused with sound. Rating: good, relevant genres: sci-fi, action, romance, drama.
Reign: The Conqueror (13 episodes + 1 movie)—I haven't seen the movie. I had thought this was by the same people who did Aeon Flux, but maybe that's just my perception of the aesthetics. Anyway, this is a strange blend of ancient and futuristic, and it's a fictionalized take on Alexander the Great. A lot of it just felt vague and contrived to me, and I never understood much of what was going on. That also makes it rather like Aeon Flux to me, except at least I liked the characters in that one. I just found this an annoying slog to get through. Rating: yuck, relevant genres: adventure, sci-fi.
Requiem from the Darkness (Kyogoku Natsuhiko Kosetsu Hyaku Monogatari, 13 episodes)—a writer in ancient Tokyo gets bored with his normal writing and decides to write a book of 100 ghost stories, but he wants to base them on real monsters, demons, urban legends, etc., instead of inventing them himself. During his research, he encounters three supernatural beings who have a similar mission, so he considers them kindred spirits. There's also a bad guy in control of them who opposes this author at first, and he's on a mission to cover the world in darkness. Of course the author finds a way to thwart him, but really... I barely remember this at all. It didn't make any sort of impression on me, so it couldn't have been that good or bad. Thus: Rating: meh, relevant genres: fantasy, mystery.
Revolutionary Girl Utena (Shoujo Kakumei Utena, 39 episodes), Adolescence of Utena (movie)—this is such a landmark series, I couldn't not watch it. But I didn't until earlier this year. It's weird. Really weird. Utena is a new student at what would seem like a very exclusive private school (yet an expelled student has no idea how he'll make ends meet?), and she has a little bit of a mysterious background. When she was little, someone gave her a special ring and said she'd find her prince with it someday. Some other students at this school have them as well, and they're part of a mysterious dueling club fighting for the right to own a girl called the Rose Bride, though there's not much purpose in it yet. There's some sort of prophecy that a time will come when whoever is in possession of the Rose Bride will be able to define the new world to come, so that leaves these duelists jockeying for position. Utena herself really doesn't know what's going on, but still manages to do well in her duels anyway. There's an arc early in the series about people being mind controlled into fighting her with some false rings, and that kept me engaged to see what was going on, but once I saw how the ending turned out, that bit of intrigue was nothing more than a tangent. It had no influence on the main plot, so I was a bit miffed at how much of the series was superfluous, but at least it kept me interested at the time. This show strikes me as the kind of thing I would have thought was endlessly cool was I was 12 but now just roll my eyes at. The super cool guy who likes to run his car up to top speed, then vault onto the hood as it races down the highway? Ridiculous numbers of that same car protruding out of the ground in the secret dueling arena? It does create a surreal effect, sure, but it felt more random for random's sake, much like lots of things that pepper the series. Knocking on a door and the person on the other side answering it while standing on their head, for example, because why not. Or the entire episode dealing with Snobby Rich Girl turning into a cow, because why not. For her part, Utena tries to treat the Rose Bride as a person, unlike everyone else who thinks of her as property. Her character arc was fine, but a lot of the rest were predictable cliches. Still a pretty good show. The movie rehashes most of the plot, but with a bit of a different motivation behind it all, and with even more randomness. Music was... actually pretty good, for the most part. I liked the commercial cuts especially. But that song that plays before almost every duel. Ugh, it's terrible. Again, it feels like something my 12-year-old self would have though was totally radical, dude, but now it's just overblown. And those lyrics. They're seriously cringe-y. Plus the song goes on forever. Every time it started, I just skipped past it. Rating: good (series), decent (movie), relevant genres: surreal, drama, romance.
Roadbuster (OVA)—I saw this really long ago, and honestly, all I can remember about it is that it focused on a Lupin III type of artful dodger who likes to tease and evade the police, who are left in the dust to shake their fist and flap their jowls at him. I didn't really like it, but I can't remember enough about the plot to say why, just that the main character and his partner are framed for kidnapping a government official's daughter. The copy I watched was titled this, but apparently the original name is Riding Bean. Rating: meh, relevant genres: action, comedy.
Rurouni Kenshin (95 episodes + 3 OVAs + 1 movie)—I haven't seen the OVAs or movie, and I didn't see the entire series, just the first 2 seasons. What I saw did come to a conclusion, though, so I didn't feel like it left things hanging. Kenshin is a wandering swordsman who's trying to atone for his past, so he helps people whenever he can. He has a special sword with the sharp edge on the back, so that in normal usage, he can't cut anyone. He gradually picks up some friends along the way. I liked this more for the characterization and the smaller-stakes situations he helps people out of, but there's also a larger plot involving a government conspiracy, and I never really followed that too well, leaving me feeling like it was all kind of vague. Several of my friends really liked the series, so that may just be me, though I certainly don't feel like I wasted my time on it. Art was rather good for its time, and the music didn't leave an impression on me. Rating: decent, relevant genres: adventure.
s-CRY-ed (26 episodes + 2 movies)—I haven't seen the movies. Certain people have the ability to manifest a particular power that usually involves controlling something or transforming part of their body to manifest a weapon. Such people are called Alters, and there's a military team of them who are responsible for tracking down rogue ones. Main character Kazuma is one of these rogues, and he makes a living as a mercenary out in a wasteland. That is, until the military arrives to start rounding up Alters, either to exterminate them or forcibly recruit them. There's some mumbo-jumbo about these powers deriving from an alternate universe, and Kazuma teaming up with the military team leader to take down a corrupt government leader. Eh. I never found it that interesting. Rating: meh, relevant genres: action, sci-fi.
Sagrada Reset (24 episodes)—in the somewhat out-of-the-way town of Sagrada, some odd phenomenon has resulted in everyone each having a special power. Yeah, that's a setup not unlike My Hero Academia or many other things. The issue here is that when someone leaves the town, their memories fade. They can't tell anyone about it, since they don't remember, and they can't use their powers, since they don't remember how to activate them, much less that they had any in the first place. There are a couple of organizations within the town government to regulate what these people can do with their powers and even assign tasks to them to forward the town's goals, and of course there's going to be some sinister purpose behind it. Main character Kei has newly arrived to Sagrada, and he encounters a girl named Sumire who feels mysterious yet familiar at the same time. On her own, she suggests that Kei partner up with another girl named Misora because she thinks their powers would be especially complementary. Kei has perfect memory. He can actually leave the town and still remember. Misora can declare a save state and snap time back to it up to three days later. Kei's perfect memory leaves him as the only one who still remembers each trip through the timeline. All her life, if something bad happened, Misora might have reset, but for all she knows, she made the same choices and got the same outcome every time. Now Kei can guide her through what changed and try to engineer the direction they want everything to go. This is a situation ripe for abuse, but to their credit, neither one of them goes power-mad over it. Really, Misora's such a follower that she'd never take initiative of her own anyway. And so they use their abilities as well as the abilities of some other townsfolk they encounter, to counteract some shadowy dealings by the town's leadership. It ends up being more of a strategy show than outright conflict, kind of like Death Note, in a way. I thought it was pretty clever, and I enjoyed it. Art was good, music fine. Rating: good, relevant genres: supernatural, strategy, mystery, drama.
Seen any of these? Did I convince you to try any of them? I'd like to hear about it in the comments.
Last 10:
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vol. 18 here
vol. 19 here
vol. 20 here
Definitely watch the OVAs for Kenshin, they're (for the most part) not as goofy as the tv series can get.
Utena was a staple of my childhood, but I tried to rewatch it last year and its first season was just a bit too silly. I remember loving a lot of it, and I think I still would, but that mandates getting through the dumb bits. That said, I think a lot of the "randomness" you mention actually did have underlying purposes, but they were trying too hard to obfuscate and keep things hidden in order to appear "big brained," and that ruins it for a lot of people.
I second your note on the music, though. I love that they made a different song for every fight, which was pretty ambitious. Truth is that rare Japanese song that I can readily remember at the slightest mention. And unlike you, I never really grew tired of Zettai Unmei Mokushiroku, even if I acknowledge the, er, juvenile(?) lyrics. (I can't believe I still remember that song's name after all these years, but when you hear it once every other episode...)
Ah, Kenshin. I watched a whole lot of that, but eventually it devolves into a "villain of the week" kind of thing, especially when we get to the whole overblown Shi-Shi-O arc. I loved the characters but it way overstayed its welcome. I recall my "nope" moment came when Kenshin, who has demonstrated being able to block bullets with his sword, tried to attack a horse and missed because... the horse... reared up. How the hell is a friggen horse faster than a bullet? And then Kenshin – again, the man with a fast enough reaction time to block a bullet and a speed that defies sight – just stands there looking surprised while the guy on the horse stabs him with a lance, because that makes perfect sense.
You did yourself a favor stopping after only a couple seasons.
RahXephon is a name I haven't heard in a long time, though I never saw it. Sagrada Reset is another, and that sounds really interesting, so it goes on my list. :)
That second one you talk about though... I can definitely see the negatives you point out as reasons I would never watch the show myself, but I also get the main character's emotional conflict over sex. I was totally there in high school. c.c
5608051
I identify quite a bit with her as well, and on the whole, I did like the story. It's just that there was so much creep factor with Hondo trying to seduce the teacher and Niina's weird relationship with her pedophile former acting coach. At least izumi totally called her on it. If you had some sort of key to which episodes focused on Kazusa's arc, I would have liked it a lot better. Heck, Momoko had a pretty compelling arc, too, and I didn't even mention her much, because the show does kind of symbolically shove her into the background.
5608043
I might. I'm generally not that much interested in historical ninja shows, and I've skipped on a bunch of them lately. I probably never would have watched it except it was on Toonami. Like I said, the bit they showed seemed to come to a conclusion, but the wikipedia page for it says they only showed through season 2. It sure seemed like it ran a long time though.
Hey, I've seen Reign: The Conqueror! It's... well, it's pretty bad. I did kind of like the vibe of "what if everything about Alexander the Great as poorly described to a six year-old, and then produced in fantasy series format based on that child's drawings without any other context?" just as an idea. But other than the idea of the aesthetic (not even the aesthetic itself; just the ideaof it!)... I'm struggling to think of actual, concrete things I liked. Um, the intro theme I remember being alright?
Yeah, "yuck" sounds about right.
5608062 Yeah, the anime gets fairly rambly, but that's because it has a LOT of filler. Rurouni Kenshin: Trust & Betrayal is really good, with amazing music and art.
5608189
Hah, that was one of the silly bits that did land with me.
To those unfamiliar with what's in the video, Nanami goes through a whole sequence of these "plant a strange animal on Anthy because that will surely discredit her for some reason" gags, and all of them backfire. It takes up nearly half the episode.